Management in a professional service firm such as Deloitte is suspended
between a range of different fundamental concerns and ways of thinking. There is a
market in which client needs are to be met, competitors matched and outperformed.
There is the general public in which accounting firms such as Deloitte increasingly
have become the object of critical scrutiny in their role as guardians of the common
rules of accountability and legislation on accounting. There is a very strong
professional culture and ethics, stemming from being a part of the professional
community of a profession which creates unique ways of organizing and managing.
And there is a growing concern about how to run the continually growing
accounting-based advisory organizations (or professional service firms) in a way that
efficiently utilizes the aggregated resources, which again creates a focus on
management as a distinct issue.
It is primarily the contradiction and dynamics of the latter two ‘internal’
concerns that the study of the dissertation is about - seen as institutional logics of
professionalism and, or versus, bureaucracy. While the focus of most research into professional service firms has been on how general structural changes affect this
unique species of organization, this study investigates how these contradictions affect
the way accountants live and work performing roles as managers; how do
accountants who become managers make sense of these contradictory logics?
The dissertation treats this question theoretically by applying extant literature
dealing with institutional change and logics with a special emphasis on recent
research that focuses on the micro-processes which are the foundations of institutions
and concretizes how institutional logics affect the action and sensemaking of actors.
The dissertation contributes to this research by applying sensemaking theory and
symbolic interactionism. The study is based on a 3-year ethnographic study in which
managers at all levels have been interviewed and observed. Actual management
processes and management training have been observed, via shadowing and
participant observation. Relevant archival material has been included in the analysis.
All these sources have been recorded and systematized in order to create a point of
departure for the analyses of the dissertation.
The main findings of the study point to:
The institutional changes described by the Professional Service Firms research
can be identified at the micro- or actor level in terms of ideals, systems, way
organizing and structures which use a logic of bureaucracy and among which the
development of a new middle-management role is a critical feature. These changes
seem to have important consequences for the basic psychological contract between
the professional and the organization in professional service firms.
The changes, as they are found in the case, are more complex and laden with
conflicts than otherwise described in the literature about professional service firms.
This is based on the way the actors ‘draw on the existing logics’ and the conditions
they have for doing this locally. This points to the importance of investigating the interaction of actors in order to understand how the new management practices are
institutionalized/structurated.
The changes towards a new model of management, found in the study, are based
on the ability (and will) of the managers to navigate the contradictory logics in such a
way that they can establish a meaningful identity as managers, and that they can
mobilize other actors who support a new way of understanding management and that
they are able to create space for the conversational reflection upon their behavior as
managers and management. The ability (and will) of the managers is in its turn
dependent on local conditions and interaction enabling these steps of sensemaking.